Building an IoT Wearable for Cows and a Mobile App for Australian Farmers

After speaking with farmers all over the world, Australian beef producers kept telling us that it would be awesome to know where their cattle were at all times. So, from our office in the Netherlands, we started to build a hardware prototype to test this concept. We went to the “do it yourself” store, made an appointment with an IoT chip fanatic, and tested the first cow tracker by putting a chip in a bottle and attaching it to the neck of a Dutch cow. After learning from our first proof of concept, we did further testing with Australian farmers. Together, with a hardware partner, we made 16 IoT collars to track the first cows in outback Australia. This proved our concept of tracking and tracing cows over long distances via the LoRa network. However, we also learnt that putting on the 16 prototypes was too cumbersome for our pilot farmer. After we saw how our product was used, we decided to build an ear tag for the cattle and a mobile app for the farmers.

By developing the hardware product alongside the mobile app, we can give farmers insights on the location of their cattle, grazing patterns, and behaviour. From September onwards, further piloting at 20 farms, tracking 70,000 cattle over 600,000 acres of land will give us new learnings to improve our product further.